The Vigil

The Vigil

*Clicking on the image above will open another window with a much larger image of the painting. Please note this opens a very large image and may take slightly longer to load.

This painting depicting the lying-in-state of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in Westminster Hall in 2002, shows the Yeoman of the Queens Body Guard in silent vigil as the public pay their last respects.

Taking some time to complete, this painting shows a representation of the scene from a perspective that was never captured by photograph at the time, making it something of a challenge to depict accurately. Particularly as there were a surprisingly limited number of suitably detailed reference photographs available to work from, most being taken quite understandably and respectfully from some distance away. Because of this piecing everything together was a fairly long and sometimes frustrating process, the most important part of the project from the outset being to create as accurate and authentic a representation of the scene as possible.

The sheer historical gravity and importance of the scene and of those involved, making attention to every aspect of the detail the absolute priority at every stage of the painting process. In all, ‘The Vigil’ took many hundreds of hours to complete over a five month period. It was a huge challenge and honour to have been given the opportunity to paint this scene for The Queens Body Guard of The Yeomen of the Guard, albeit such a sad and poinient one to paint.

‘The Vigil’ is now hanging in St James’s Palace in London where it was viewed in person on the 6th of November 2012 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll and Prince Philip.

Reference pictures used to create this painting ..

Click on the thumbnails below to see larger images.

This painting was created using a slightly unusual and unorthodox combination of mediums. Painted mainly in acrylics, watercolour, cellulose, gilding, etching and pencil work were all also employed in the course of the painting process. The original painting being 1220mm x 600mm in size.

*Below are some pictures showing some of the detail work. Click on any of the images below to see larger images of individual details, or click on the main image at the top of the page to see a complete, but much larger image of the whole painting.